Mobile devices often come with navigation features, such as mapping and navigation software. Typically, a map server will render an image of a map based on map data and send the map image to a navigation application (e.g., specialized navigation application, web browser, map application, etc.) on the mobile device for presentation on a display of the mobile device. The map rendering is typically performed at the map server because, while all navigation applications can display raster tiles (e.g., rendered images) from the map server nicely, some navigation applications and/or mobile device are not able to render map data at the mobile device (e.g., with the GPU or CPU of the mobile device). Moreover, rendering the map image on the server can cause delays in presenting the map on the mobile device and can reduce the responsiveness of the navigation application on the mobile device. Thus, client-side rendering of map images is preferable.
Typically, client-side rendering capabilities are determined based on capabilities reported by the mobile device. For example, a navigation application running on the mobile device can report various navigation application and/or device characteristics that can be used to determine whether the mobile device and/or navigation application is capable of accurately rendering map data. However, the reported capabilities may be incorrect or may not provide a good enough understanding of the rendering capabilities of the mobile device and/or navigation application. Thus, a reliable mechanism for testing the rendering capabilities of a mobile device is needed.